Even When Nothing's Chasing You
by Carrieosity
Summary: While hunting a ghost in the woods, Dean and Sam stumble across the Barkley Marathons. It's a hundred miles of weird. Sam is intrigued. Dean is unamused.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N:_

 _The Barkley Marathons is a real race. Every strange bit of info here is true. Lazarus Lake (not his real name) is the real race director. Even the pit bull (named Big) is real. There's a documentary up about it on Netflix; you should watch it._

 _I follow the updates for this race on Twitter every April 1st. While I've actually run a 50-miler myself, the idea of doing this race fills me with horror. Saw briars, man. ::shudder::_

 _One, maybe two, more chapters after this._

"Fucking ouch!"

Dean was more than fed up as he reached down to disentangle his pants leg from the insanely vicious briars that seemed to litter every surface in these God-forsaken woods. Navigating by flashlight made it even harder to avoid stumbling into them, and there were blood-edged holes in both legs of his jeans. He swore again as another briar pierced his fingers when he freed himself from the angry plant. "Sam, I'm getting more beat up by Mother Nature than I will be from this ghost. I'm about to just say that anybody stupid enough to be out here in the first place deserves whatever Casper gives them."

"Dean." Sam's face was shadowed behind the glow of his own flashlight, but Dean could hear the bitch-face in his voice.

"Yeah, whatever. But if we don't find it soon, we're going to have to start keeping watch for vampires, too. Gonna attract all sorts of monsters with the trail of blood I'm leaving."

At first he'd thought Sam had been playing an elaborate April Fool's Day prank on him, and he'd still be harboring suspicions about it if Sam wasn't taking nearly as much damage as he himself was. Something strange was roaming around Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tennessee, which just happened to be right next to the former Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. The prison had actually shut down about the time Lucifer had emerged topside and started his campaign to win the heart and mind (and everything else) of his intended vessel, and with all the memories brought back along with that recollection, Dean squashed down his irritation again and found gratitude that they were alive and able to focus on something so mundane as hunting a ghost in a state park.

Well, he did for about three minutes. "Ow, damn it!"

Sam waited for Dean to disentangle himself, shining his flashlight idly around the bushes and trees. "Hey, what's that?" The light had briefly reflected off something about head-height in the trees nearby, flashing back as he swept the beam. Moving closer, he saw a hole in a tree trunk, in which a plastic bag was jammed, hanging partway out. Out of curiosity, Sam made his way to the tree and pulled at the bag. Inside was a book. " _Death Walks the Woods_? Seriously? A little on the nose, don't you think?"

"Ghost has a sense of humor, or somebody is messing with us." Dean grimaced. "Tell me again how many people have disappeared?"

"Five. Two were teenagers."

"Great," Dean muttered. He couldn't bring himself to write off kids, no matter how fed up he was feeling.

A sudden loud rustling of approaching footsteps made both brothers spin, drawing salt-loaded guns out of reflex reaction, even knowing that ghosts don't shuffle, trip, or curse under their breaths. A few moments later, a disheveled man wearing a headlamp appeared out of the trees. "Whoa, guns!" he grunted, eyes blowing wide. He raised his hands tentatively. "Are you…real? Like, real?"

Blinking in the light, Dean and Sam glanced quickly at each other, lowering the guns but not putting them away yet. "Why, are you seeing things that…aren't real?" Sam asked carefully. "Unusual things?"

Strangely, the man began to laugh, wheezing a bit as he did. "Seeing things. Yeah, you could say that. Heh." Apparently deciding that the other men were either not real or at least not going to shoot him, he lowered his hands and stumbled toward the Sam and the tree. "Here, gimme," he said, reaching for the book. Sam handed it to him, baffled, and the man began to page through it quickly.

Dean attempt to keep things moving. "What sort of things have you seen? Like, mist or fog? Weird people?" When the man didn't react, he shrugged at Sam and tried again. "Feel anything strange, like cold spots? Any strange smells?"

"Dude, how long have you been out here?" Standing closer to the man than Dean was, Sam could see that he was completely covered in scrapes and wounds. His torso was coated in dirt and mud, as though he'd fallen numerous times, and there were white rings around his neck and sleeves from salt and sweat. "Are you all right? Do you need any medical help?"

"Hmph, there. Page seventy-nine," was the only intelligible response, and the man promptly ripped the page free from the book. Turning to face Sam, he seemed to be trying to solve a puzzle. "You're not part of this, are you?"

For a moment, they all stood staring. Sam and Dean were rapidly reaching the conclusion that this man had either suffered a head injury or failed some sort of sanity check when he met the angry spirit, and they were going to have to do _something_ about him. The man, on the other hand, seemed to be equally confused about the two men he'd only just accepted as physically real. It was almost a relief to hear more approaching footsteps from the same direction.

"Over here!" a voice called as another headlamp blinded the group. Two more men, one somewhat behind the other, came bursting into the small, increasingly crowded clearing. They were in similar states as the first man, bloodied and bruised. Dean quickly thrust his gun behind his back, noticing that Sam had already stowed his. "Hey, a party!"

"They're real," the first man said, nodding solemnly.

The two newcomers smirked a little at each other. "Uh, yeah, we can see that. Seeing things already, Bill? It's only lap two."

Struggling to make sense of anything at all, Sam suddenly noticed something he hadn't. "Are those…are those race numbers?" He pointed at the men's thighs, where paper numbers had been pinned.

The men stopped and stared at Sam. One of the two new arrivals, who had taken the book from the first man and was flipping through it, was first to speak. "Hang on," he said slowly. "It's the middle of the night, and we're in the literal middle of nowhere. If you're not racing, what the hell are you doing out here?"

After somehow managing to talk their way out of that conversation (aided by the less-than-firm grasp some of the racers were maintaining on reality), Sam and Dean were forced to declare the night's efforts a bust. Apparently, there was a small crowd of men and women sweeping over and across the mountains in the dark, and the ghost was either going to be in hiding or feasting, but no matter; the odds of Sam and Dean accidentally shooting an innocent bystander had now far exceeded the likelihood of their stumbling across the spirit they were hunting.

On the other hand, there was now a group of potential witnesses they could interview, whether or not the folks realized that what they might have seen was supernatural and not simply the product of dehydration and exhaustion.

They made their way to the fire road where they'd left the Impala, then drove down to the park entrance, where they found what looked like a tiny tent city. Men and women in various states of physical breakdown were groaning in lawn chairs, having destroyed feet tended to by friends and partners, drinking sports drinks by the gallon, or simply staring into space and looking shell-shocked.

Dean nudged Sam in the side. "Didn't you try to convince me that running was good for you?" Sam just rolled his eyes. Spotting a bearded man who looked smugly official, Sam strode over, putting on his very best "tell me everything you know" puppy-dog eyes. The large brown pit bull terrier lounging at the bearded man's feet grinned up at him as he approached, seeming to know exactly who and what he was and approving.

* * *

"So, it's called the Barkley Marathons," Sam said when he rejoined Dean. "It's a hundred mile race, broken into five loops of twenty miles, give or take. And get this: since they started in in 1986, only fourteen people have finished the whole thing."

"Well, it's a hundred miles, Sammy," Dean huffed. He'd spent the last hour trying to interview people who spluttered with laughter every time he asked if they'd smelled anything unusual. The entire camp smelled like dead goats.

"No, Dean, there are lots of hundred mile races, and lots of people actually do them. Back when I was at Stanford, one of my friends did the Headlands Hundred in Rodeo Beach. I mean, it took him almost thirty hours and he looked like death for days afterward, but…"

"So, like these guys." Dean waved a hand around him. "Sure, healthy."

"Dean, listen to me. Steve, my friend, did a hundred miles in thirty hours. The time limit for _one loop_ of this race is twelve hours. That's more than half an hour to go one mile. And over a thousand people have tried, and less than fourteen managed it."

Dean studied his brother, wariness growing as he saw the thoughts forming behind his eyes. "You're _into_ this. You're actually thinking about this. Sam!"

"Dean, don't give me that look."

"That witch last week hit you with something, didn't she?"

"It's just a race!"

"You want to race, Lance Armstrong, there are 5K runs all the time."

"You know, Lance has actually started running ultramarathons now, so I can't even argue that point with you anymore," Sam said, thoughtfully. "I don't think he does 5Ks, though."

"Don't try to change the subject!"

"Look," Sam said placatingly. "The things that make most of these guys stop are exhaustion and little physical problems that add up, like blisters. We're used to going hard for long periods of time, going without sleep. I know damn well how to tend to small injuries so I can keep going, too. I just think it might be a fun test!"

"And have you forgotten that there's a _fucking ghost_ out there?" Dean hissed, trying to keep his voice low so as not to freak out the people around them.

"Dean, the race won't happen again until next April. We have a whole year to catch and end the thing."

"Yeah, well," Dean floundered, searching for another argument why this was a perfectly terrible idea. "How many guys you think died bloody in that prison over the years? Plus, you saw the historical markers on the way in; there were a bunch of Civil War battles here, too. This place is probably crawling with more ghosts than people, and you want to go running around in the woods all night."

Sam grinned and rolled his eyes. "Dean, you just described our lives."

"We don't wear stupid race numbers while we do it."

"Shut up." Sam stretched his arms over his head and twisted his back, yawning. "Anyway, Laz, the guy who runs the race, only takes a small amount of the people who apply to run it every year. Even if I apply, I probably won't get accepted."

"Yeah, because that's the way our luck rolls," Dean muttered.

* * *

They went out two days later, wearing multiple layers of thick canvas pants. It took almost all night, but the ghost found them as they were almost ready to give up for the night. Dean got tossed into a tree and rolled almost entirely down a steep, rocky slope before Sam got a shot off at it. Luckily, though, finding (or being found by) the ghost allowed them to narrow down the location of the unlucky escaped prisoner's bones, which were new enough to not have been buried by nature. Sam held off the ghost until Dean could burn the skeleton and send him on his way.

By June, Dean had forgotten about crazed runners in the woods. Sam's morning jogs had receded into the background of his awareness; he was usually back home and showered before Dean had finished his first cup of coffee.

In September, when Dean found a potential hunt in Colorado and proposed heading out on Saturday morning, Sam winced and suggested they either go Sunday or call in another hunter. Dean raised an eyebrow. "Got something else going on?"

"Got a trail marathon in Lawrence." His attempt at nonchalance was so bad that Dean almost thought he was joking. He wasn't.

"Why the hell are you doing that?"

"It's training."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Sam returned to the bunker Saturday evening with a slight wince in his walk, a medal around his neck, and a glow on his face that nearly negated the need for lighting. Dean ignored all three things as best he could, so as not to encourage him further, but it was hard. When he gassed up for the next morning's trip, he happened to mention that the snacks he bought were for "my baby brother, who just ran a marathon" to the clerk, who smiled politely.

Winter in Kansas is a brutal season. Dean shuddered in horror when Sam returned home from long runs with icicles hanging from his hair. He grew a beard to help keep his face warm, and it grew icicles, too. Dean had never made so many "long-haired hippie" jokes in his life.

"I'm telling you, Jody, I think he's finally cracked. Lucifer and the cage couldn't do it, but something did. One of these days, he's gonna head out on some trail, and he won't stop going, and I'll find him a week later in some forest out west somewhere, eating berries and twigs and sleeping on the ground."

She laughed, the Skype image shaking when her knee must have banged the table under her computer. "He'll be fine, Dean. You know, I did a marathon once."

"No, not you, too!"

"Oh, it was a long time ago. Before I was even married. I did one of the Rock 'n Roll Marathons, with rock bands playing all along the course. It was pretty cool!"

"Led Zeppelin themselves could be playing at the finish line, and I wouldn't run. Probably."

On Christmas evening, Sam fidgeted in front of the computer. Dean was still rolling his eyes and muttering about the weirdness of it all; apparently, this bizarre race wouldn't even tell you outright how to get in. Sam had needed to join online groups of other "ultra runners" ( _"It's a real word, Dean; ultrarunning isn't a made-up term!"_ ) to find out what day he needed to send an email to a guy who went by a fake name ( _"We do, too, Dean!"_ ) with an actual essay about why he should be _allowed_ to run the race. Which he probably wouldn't even finish.

"At least it's cheap," Dean cracked. "A dollar-sixty won't break the bank. And a license plate from our state? What the hell kind of guy is this?"

"Only forty people are getting in," Sam said, grimacing. "Most of these guys have been doing races like this for ages. My only real shot is being this year's sacrificial virgin."

Dean spun. "What, now?"

Sam snorted a laugh. "Every year, he picks one person who looks completely unprepared. It's a joke. Nobody expects them to finish, and they want to see just how bad they'll do."

Dean was suddenly incensed. "Well, fuck that! Sacrificial virgin, my ass! I saw those guys out there, whining over chafing! You were literally tortured in hell! They don't get to bring you in just to laugh!"

"Dean – "

"No, man, I'm serious. If they think you're gonna go down there, run a few miles and come back whimpering and begging to quit…Sam, you need to shove this down their throats. Fourteen finishers? Whatever. You send that essay. If they don't take it, we'll just hack their system and put you in anyway."

"Dean, it's not that kind of race. There's no system. Laz is working out of a spiral notebook. I think he prints out all the emails and puts them in a literal hat to draw the names."

"Then we'll get Cas to switch the names! I don't care, man! You're doing this race!"

Sam wondered when Dean would realize that he'd completely flipped positions on the event. No point in looking at it too closely, he decided, clicking "send."


	2. Chapter 2

_"Dear Sam,_

 _It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that your name has been selected for the Barkley Marathons...It is anticipated that this enterprise will amount to nothing more than an extended period of unspeakable suffering, at the end of which you will ultimately find only failure and humiliation. At best, you might escape without incurring permanent physical damage and psychological scarring, which will torment you for the remainder of your life."_

"Well, that's not ominous at all." Sam was still staring at the email, trying to convince himself that it was real, that he'd somehow managed to actually and legitimately place himself on this path. It was a shocking moment of clarity, breaking free from all the hazy, adrenaline and endorphin-fueled hours leading up to it, similar to the terrifying flashes when he'd realized _I'm facing down an ancient evil creature with just a glorified hunk of metal_.

"'Psychological scarring.' Pfft," Dean snorted. "He has no idea, does he?"

"Well, I'd hope not."

"So you got another month, and then…" Dean made a vague gesture with his hand that could have meant anything from "you'll run the race" to "aliens are coming for us." Sam nodded; both scenarios seemed equally possible and frightening just now.

"You ready?"

Sam barked a laugh. "I think I'm as ready as I can get at this point. Other than making sure I have everything ready and packed up, I mean. I still need some stuff for the campsite."

"Campsite? Dude, you're supposed to be running, not napping."

"Yeah, about that. One of the 'quirks' of the race is that they don't tell us when it's supposed to start. We're supposed to camp out at the start line until the director blows on a conch shell -"

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"- and that means we start in an hour."

Dean levelled a flat stare at Sam, compressing his lips. Sam shrugged, smiling weakly. Rolling his eyes, Dean sighed loudly. "Okay, but you at least know _about_ when it starts? Like, we don't have to hang around for a week waiting for Ralph to summon Piggy and the other boys?" Sam quirked an eyebrow, and Dean frowned. "C'mon, everybody's read that one, Sam."

Shaking his head, Sam replied, "It's the last weekend of March, but that's as specific as they get. Might start at noon, might be at three in the morning."

"I don't ever want to hear you call me crazy for anything I do, ever again, in my entire life." Grimacing, Dean stood up from his chair and headed for the kitchen and a beer. Calling backward over his shoulder, he added, "We can throw some extra blankets in the Impala. We've slept in her often enough."

* * *

Frozen Head State Park was, well, frozen. It was colder this year than it had been the year before, and the brothers' breaths were visible puffs in front of their faces when they climbed out of the car. Lean and rugged looking people were milling around a picnic table, waiting for their turns to study a large map taped to the surface. Others were standing in a line, chatting happily while the man at the front of the line took down their names.

"Guess I have to go sign in," Sam said. He looked slightly nervous, eyeing the competition, many of whom apparently had known each other for years.

"Go on, then," Dean said. Part of him wanted to give some encouraging words, say something to wipe away the hesitant expression on his brother's face, but it didn't seem like the time or place for _feelings_. The twin vibes of adrenaline and friendly aggression felt thick around the campsite, reminding Dean somewhat of the macho posturing that arose when hunters gathered. _Don't show weakness_ , he tried to communicate with his eyes and body language. He punched Sam in the shoulder and waved toward the table. Sam grinned, apparently getting the message, and visibly relaxed his neck and shoulders before sauntering off.

Dean leaned back against the trunk of the Impala, glancing at the activity happening around him. Some folks were setting up tents and folding chairs, while others unrolled awnings from campers. It felt like a tailgating scene - or at least, what Dean presumed tailgating was like, based on televised football games. He grinned when he saw a man next to him pull out a small grill.

"Party now, triage scene later," a female voice said from behind him. Dean turned and saw a pink-cheeked young woman, sprawled in a camp chair beside her own camper trailer. She had a mug of coffee steaming in her hand, and she gestured in offering toward the pot plugged into an outlet on the side of her trailer. Dean nodded and gratefully accepted the plastic mug she filled for him. "The coffee pot is one of the first things we pack for this," she said, smiling. "The runners won't get much rest, and so we won't either, since there's no way to tell when they'll stumble back in here and need help."

"You've done this before?" Dean asked.

"Third try," she nodded. "There were a few years between the first two attempts, once he saw what it was really like out there. But he finally tried again last year, and he did well enough that he hopes the third time's the charm. Came this close to finishing the Fun Run before the cut-off time." She held up her fingers about an inch apart, grimacing.

"What's the Fun Run?"

"Three loops, sixty miles." The woman gave him an odd look. "You're crewing, right? You don't know the race details?"

"My brother's running, but I'm just sort of...here," Dean said, feeling strangely defensive. "I'm not a runner."

"Hope you're a medic," she said with a small smirk. "You don't have to be a runner, but your brother's going to need help. Blisters, bandages, taping."

Dean tried not to laugh. "Yeah, I think I can handle that. Got some experience putting him back together after...stuff. No problems there."

"And you'll need to make sure he stays fed and hydrated. If he falls behind on nutrition and fluids, there's no real good way to recover. All downhill from there. That's what took Mike out the first year; he was hallucinating garden gnomes all over the place, for some reason. I still don't know how he made it back out of the woods in one piece."

While Dean tried to process that (garden gnomes?), a man walked up to the two of them, grinning wickedly. "Found the 'fresh meat,'" he said, dropping into the chair next to the woman. Looking up at Dean, he nodded politely. "Hey, I'm Mike. You?"

Introductions were hastily made; Amy, Mike's wife, apologized for not getting Dean's name before "diving right into business," but Dean waved it off. "Anyway, who is it?" Amy said to her husband. "Nobody looks obvious to me yet."

"Tall guy, over there," Mike said. Dean frowned when he saw that Mike was pointing toward Sam. "Laz must be feeling sadistic this year, letting him in. Guy said he's only been doing ultra training for a year! He must have written one hell of an entry essay, or else they're hoping he's going to be the most entertaining crash and burn ever." He guffawed, shaking his head.

"Red jacket?" Dean confirmed, tight-lipped. "That's my little brother, man."

Mike stopped laughing abruptly. Amy jabbed a fist in his ribs, chastising. "Sorry, Dean. Didn't mean to...well. We all started sometime, right?" He smiled weakly; Dean twitched his lips into a smile that didn't come close to looking sincere. "But honestly, dude, what made him decide that _this_ was a good starting place? No offense, but...it's probably going to eat him alive."

Dean was feeling outraged on his brother's behalf. At the same time, the unease he'd been pushing down, from the memories of the broken-looking runners he'd seen that first year, now combined with Amy's suggestions that failure on his own part could lead to a barely mobile Sam wandering the woods seeing things that weren't there - well, he was feeling less on-board with this idea by the minute. Pride won out, though.

"Sam and I have faced down situations that could have 'eaten us alive' before, and, obviously, we're still standing. My brother's tough. He says he can do this, he can do it."

"That's the spirit," Amy murmured, as Dean turned and walked back to the car. He opened the back door and threw himself down upon the seat, trying hard to shove down his worries. Mike had seen garden gnome herds when he ran low on water. Sam had way worse images from which to draw, and suddenly all Dean could see in his head was his little brother, back against a tree, shouting at visions of Lucifer.

* * *

"What, did too many people make it through last year, Laz? Two whole finishers, and now we got a new hill in the middle?" The man with the scraggly beard standing next to Sam glared mockingly at the race director, who smiled lazily.

"It's a lovely view at the top, though," he said. "Worth all the saw briars to get up there." The runner cursed amiably as he wandered away, leaving Sam to stare at the map alone. He was trying not to feel out of his depths, though it was a losing battle. Laz reached across the table and clapped him on the forearm.

"You're the guy who wrote the poem about fighting with the devil," he said, still with the smug smile across his face. He'd been basking in the participant's dire predictions and complaints all morning, and Sam was beginning to think that he and Crowley would make good drinking buddies. "Liked the metaphors. Real vivid."

"I've got a pretty good imagination," Sam replied, dropping his eyes and shrugging.

"Just don't make any deals with him if you start seeing him halfway up Rat Jaw climb." He laughed to himself, enjoying his own joke, and Sam laughed, too, shivers running down his spine.

He walked back to the Impala, climbing into the front seat in a mirror of Dean's position. Both brothers were quiet for long minutes before Dean spoke. "This is stupid."

"Yep."

There was more silence.

"We got enough water?"

"Yeah. And filters, for if I run out and need to drink from streams."

"You do that, then. Don't need you seeing demonic garden gnomes and losing your mind all over again."

"I...don't think I'll ask."

"Good."

They lay in silence for a while longer. Finally, Dean sat up and peered over the seat at his brother. "You're not anybody's 'fresh meat.' You go kick it in the ass, okay?" He clenched his jaw tightly against any further concerns he might say out loud.

Sam nodded solemnly. "Sure thing, Dean."

"And...if you do see anything weird up there - something that looks like our kind of weird? Make sure it's not another runner before you kill it, okay?"

"That's the plan," Sam said, snorting.

* * *

The sound of the blown conch shell rolled through the parking lot campsite at two in the morning. Sam and Dean had gotten their four hours, so they weren't all that fussed.

An hour later, Laz lit a cigarette, and at the sight of the glowing embers, forty whooping runners charged forward. Or, rather, that's what Dean expected them to do. In fact, they sort of ambled forward in a shuffling trot, while family members cheered them on. Considering that they'd all be starting off by scaling the first enormous hill, Dean didn't blame them.

"Twelve hours," Amy muttered. When Dean turned to look at her, she shook her head. "Well, that's the limit, anyway. Say at least eight hours before we see them back. Weather's pretty good, nice and dry, but they'll be slowed by the darkness. Most people who drop out do it after the first loop, so if he makes it through feeling good, he's doing great."

"You talking about Mike or Sam?"

She just winked and shrugged. "I'm going to get a few more hours in my bed. Once Laz starts playing taps, it can be hard to sleep." She walked away before Dean could ask what she meant.

Six hours later, Dean was startled out of a particularly morbid speculation with the answer to what Amy had meant. A bugle was playing a horrible performance of "Taps," and Dean climbed out of the car to see Laz puffing hard into the instrument as a sheepish-looking runner limped back from the direction he'd started. "Twisted my ankle coming down Jacque Mate Hill," he sighed. "Didn't even make it to book two." A friend came forward to help him, and they made their slow, painful way to his tent.

Several hours after that, the taps were playing with increasing frequency. A few runners had returned successful, carrying pages torn from every hidden book, but many more were beaten and dejected, bleeding and taking mincing steps on painful feet. Dean was fighting the urge to pick a fight with someone, anyone, just to take the edge off his agitation, when he finally saw Sam trotting down the hill. His face was glowing with pride.

"All thirteen pages!" he said, waving them over his head. The race director reached out to take them, and as he counted, Dean waited impatiently. When Laz nodded, Dean grabbed Sam by the arm and hauled him to the car.

"I'm good, Dean, seriously!" Sam protested. "Honestly, it's like we said. Hacking through the woods, searching for hidden things? That's probably more natural for me than just running along on a paved surface with people handing me cups of Gatorade." Only a little reassured, Dean was shoving Sam onto a seat and yanking his shoes and socks from his feet.

"No blisters yet?" he said, a little surprised.

Sam smirked. "I did research," he said. "It's good for more than identifying ghouls and ghosts."

As Sam headed out for loop two, fed and with an extra sandwich in hand, Dean was starting to feel like this was going to be okay, after all. Amy waved and gave him a thumbs up, and he winked and nodded back, breathing a little easier. It was just after 1:45 in the afternoon, and Dean figured he'd see Sam again around 11:30 or midnight. _He's actually got this_ , he thought to himself, ignoring the sudden voice that whispered how every time he'd had that thought in the past, it had been a precursor to badness.


	3. Chapter 3

It should have gone without saying that a deeply-ingrained habit for both Winchester brothers was that of pretending all was going perfectly well when, in fact, it was decidedly not. Sam was actually rather surprised that Dean had so quickly accepted his reassurances about how he was doing; after all these years, and all the times either of them had been "just fine" right up until they were dead or dying, he would have thought Dean would have been a bit more skeptical. Maybe he was just getting better at acting.

Not that he was going to complain. The last thing he needed was for Dean to freak out and go full Mother Hen on his ass over what was just exhaustion, some bruising, maybe a cracked rib or two, a big lump on the back of his head…

Okay, so it sounded bad when he laid it all out like that. But he was doing better than a lot of the guys out there, and he was definitely doing better than those guys had thought he would do.

"Looking strong, newbie!" one guy called now, coming up from behind him through the woods. Sam saved his breath instead of replying, waving an acknowledging hand instead. He was trudging along at this point, so the guy was able to easily pass him and disappear among the trees ahead. Sam didn't even consider trying to catch up.

His ribs were aching from his first big fall, coming down Zipline hill near the end of the first loop. His foot had caught a root, and there was absolutely no way to stop himself from tumbling the rest of the way down the steep slope, sliding the last few feet directly into a gnarly patch of saw briars. Extricating himself from the vicious briars had almost taken his mind off the pains throughout the rest of his body, but they were revisiting him now, throbbing with each footfall.

Been through worse, he tried to console himself, before realizing that the thought wasn't exactly encouraging. After all, he'd literally died. "Worse" was a way more relative concept for him than it was for most people.

He was a little less than halfway through the second loop when the sun went down again. He knew he was moving slower now, and he was really not looking forward to covering the remaining miles by headlamp and flashlight. Falling the way he did had made him nervous; at the same time, he knew he didn't have so much of a time cushion that he could afford to go too slowly. If only there were other runners around now, to help take his mind off his fears. With such a small group, and taking attrition into account, Sam found himself running alone, with only his thoughts for company, more often than he had imagined.

His thoughts were not good company to have.

So he tried singing to himself instead, classic rock tunes that Dean had impressed into his subconscious mind through countless miles of driving, or random pop songs that were just annoying enough to have made their way permanently into his memory. He even found himself murmuring lyrics from that student-written high school musical about their lives. "John and Mary, husband and wife…" A near-hysterical grin cracked his face, and he wondered whether "runner's high" could actually include delirium.

He had no idea how he made it down Zipline this time. He had no recollection of actually doing so. Probably not good.

Coming back into camp this time, he was almost taken aback by the abrupt wash of light and loud noise. Somebody was banging a cowbell, and Sam felt like covering his ears in defense. He handed over the sheaf of pages, suddenly unsure whether he had found all ten or not; Laz counted them and nodded, so he guessed he must have. Then Dean was suddenly next to him, grinning and chattering as he pulled on his arm, and Sam was having trouble processing what his brother was saying.

"I'm good!" he said, trying to smile and hoping that what he was saying was the correct and appropriate answer to anything Dean might have said. Dean frowned slightly, but nodded and patted his back, so Sam supposed he was doing a decent job covering up his disorientation. He was fine, after all; he was just tired. Maybe he had enough time for a brief nap - just a half-hour before heading back out…

"Sammy!" He felt hands gripping the sides of his head, and his eyes snapped open to see Dean staring into his face, eyes full of worry.

"I'm good, I'm good!" he said. "Sorry, just nodded off. Been almost twenty-four hours now - I'm just a bit tired. Think I could lie down in the car, have you wake me in twenty?" He didn't wait for an answer, or for anything else Dean might have to say, before pulling open the back door of the Impala and collapsing face-first into the backseat.

* * *

Dean was practically vibrating, shifting from foot to foot in agitated concern as he watched Sam head off into his third loop. The difference between Sam's appearance following the second loop completion, compared to the first, had been huge; instead of grinning in triumph, this time Sam was almost in zombie mode, eyes glassy with exhaustion. There were rips in his pants, showing the old-fashioned, tight-fitting pants he'd worn underneath to protect him from the thorns and briars. Sam had found them in a bunker storeroom, and they were far removed from the modern, technical fabric most of the runners were wearing to protect their legs, but...well, they had no proof that the pants were imbued with any supernatural properties, though the tiny sigils embroidered into the waistband were sort of suspicious. Whether it was wool woven "like they just don't make these days," or something less ordinary, Sam's legs were a lot less bloodied than Dean might have expected. He had made up for that on his arms and face, as well as a patch of his back visible when his shirt rode up during his brief nap.

Amy had nodded encouragingly when she saw Dean's anxious face. "He's looking good!" she called, and when Dean raised both eyebrows in disbelief, she clarified, "He's still moving, and he's heading out again. In Barkley terms, that's damn good for this point." Dean decided, for the thousandth time, that runners were all dangerously, contagiously, insane.

Oh, this was a horribly idea. He had too many issues of his own to deal with seeing Sam like this, staggering and struggling like he had during the freaking Trials. He knew his brother needed him to be strong and supportive, so he'd tried his best to keep his jaw firmed into as genuine as grin as he could manage while pouring bottles of Gatorade down Sam's throat, along with pretzels and packets of what looked disgustingly like runny jelly but which claimed to be "fuel." (Earlier, Amy had handed Mike actual slices of cold, boiled potatoes liberally dipped in a bowl of salt, and Dean felt like vomiting just watching. Again, dangerously crazy people.)

When Sam was gone, though, Dean had nothing left to do but panic. It was now past two in the morning, but there was no way he was going to be able to sleep. Luckily, he knew somebody else who wouldn't be asleep, either. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, glancing around surreptitiously, and dialed.

"Hello, Dean," a comforting growl said into his ear.

"Cas," Dean said on an exhale, closing his eyes and tipping his head backward, trying to convince his neck muscles to unknot.

"You sound upset," Castiel said. "Is everything okay? Are you on a hunt?"

"No, not that. It's that running thing I told you about, the thing Sam's doing." Dean dearly wished Cas could have been there with him for this, just to keep him talked down, but now that his mojo was powered back up, Cas had been doing his best to clean up some of the messes and issues still lingering from Metatron's power grab and Amara's destruction. As one of the few angels remaining on earth at this point, he saw it as a personal duty. Cas still would likely have accompanied them to the race had Dean asked, but Dean had felt silly about doing so; after all, it was just running, not life or death.

"How is it going?" Cas asked. "Is Sam winning?" Always the most dedicated supporter of the Winchesters, Cas was steadfast in his belief that if Sam entered a competition, merely finishing was an assumption not worth mentioning. Dean rolled his eyes.

"He's not even halfway done, Cas, and…" He gulped. "I'd say I wish you were here, and I do, man, but it's maybe better that you aren't, or I'd probably be asking you to mojo him unconscious so I could drag his ass home."

"Why would you do that to him?" Cas gently scolded, sounding confused.

"Because he looks like hell! And I would know!" Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know whether to hope he can keep going, or to wish he'd come to his senses and give up on this."

"Have faith in your brother." When Dean snorted, Cas repeated, "Have faith either way. He's a smart man, and it's just a foot race. He wouldn't deliberately injure himself out of misguided pride."

"Unlike some of us, right?"

"I'm unable to argue against that," chuckled Castiel. "I do wish I could be there to support you both."

"Yeah. Even if you had your wings, though, all I could tell you is that he's somewhere in the hills of Frozen Head State Park. Finding him would - "

" - be the work of five or ten minutes, Dean. I'm an angel, not a human forest ranger."

Dean laughed, though his chest still felt tight. "Well, maybe we can meet you back at the bunker when this is over, help me patch him up?"

"Of course, Dean."

* * *

"I shouldn't have gone back out," Sam said to himself. In the middle of the night, completely alone and exhausted, his internal monologues had become external ones without him noticing much. The old adage about it being okay to talk to yourself so long as you didn't talk back had also ceased to apply; he nodded in agreement with himself about the wisdom, or lack thereof, in his choice.

"No, this was stupid. Why am I doing this?"

"Because I didn't want to just give up. Not for no good reason, anyway."

He shrugged at his own reasoning, accepting it. One foot in front of the other, he trudged along. Only a few miles into this loop, he'd concluded that there was no way he could fathom doing two more after it. If he could finish this loop though, before three PM, he could claim a "Fun Run" finish. New goal in place, he just needed to keep moving forward, as well as stay coherent enough to gather the book pages to prove that he had.

About four miles in, the headlamp lighting his path flickered. In his state of near-delirium, it took several long moments for him to realize it was either a battery issue or damage from one of his falls, not ghost interference. "Well, that's bad," he muttered. Staring ahead into the trees, he estimated that there were maybe three major treacherous climbs and descents he'd need to make before the sun rose. Looking backward, it was clear that the distance he'd already covered would be no easier to retrace in pitch blackness.

"I'm screwed."

The light flickered again, sagging deeply before regaining a somewhat fainter glow.

"At least this would probably count as a good reason to stop," he said. "Maybe...maybe I'll just stay right here…"

"In the woods?"

Sam paused, thinking. "I didn't say that," he said. "Did I?"

"If you have to stop and think about it, it's really not a good sign," he heard a voice say. No, it definitely wasn't his own voice.

"Hallucinations," he said. "Okay."

"What? No." The voice sounded a little irritated, and Sam felt strangely sad about disappointing the figment of his own imagination.

Leaves crunched nearby, off to his side. Nervous to see what he might be hallucinating, Sam slowly turned his head. Leaning against a tree, regarding him thoughtfully, was…

"You're my hallucination?" He rubbed his eyes. "Well, you're not a hellhound, so it could be worse."

"Rarely have I been damned by such faint praise!" The shorter man grabbed his chest dramatically, feigning great insult. "Really, Samsquatch, a hellhound? In these woods? Even hellhounds have standards."

Sam giggled. Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously, Sammy, what the hell? You look like you died about two weeks ago but you never got the memo to lie down."

"Yeah, well, you're dead, too." Sam wondered whether that made any sense to say. He was talking to the imaginary Gabriel now, which was probably worse than talking to himself. But if his brain was what had created Gabriel, then technically he still was talking to himself, so maybe he was still all right? He didn't know the rules about that.

"Obviously not dead," Gabriel said, smirking. "Did a pretty good job faking though, so I can't fault you for believing it. But...ta-dah!" He gestured at himself, then looked miffed when Sam just giggled again. When Sam swayed a little on his feet, Gabriel quickly added, "Maybe you should sit down, until you've processed that a bit?"

"Okay," Sam said obligingly, before all but falling to his knees in the dirt with a thud. Now he knew he was probably in deep trouble, taking actual suggestions from his hallucination. Even if he was the one inventing it, and therefore giving himself advice, there was definitely an extra level of weird here.

The headlamp flickered again, this time turning off for a full two seconds before buzzing quietly and rekindling. Fake-Gabriel pointed. "So, wandering the woods with faulty equipment? Thought you were the smart one." Stepping forward before Sam could react, the imaginary archangel reached out a finger and tapped the light. It suddenly glowed intensely, far brighter than it had done before. "There you go!"

Sam's jaw dropped open. For a moment, he entertained the idea that this wasn't a hallucination at all, that the dead archangel wasn't dead, that Gabriel was, in fact, here...in Tennessee...in the middle of his race…

"No, just a really good hallucination," he said.

Gabriel looked actually angry now. "Why would you think you're hallucinating, anyway?" he grumbled. "Weigh the evidence, kiddo! You can see me, hear me, feel me…" With the last, he reached out and pinched Sam's arm; Sam yelped and rubbed at it. "And it's not like I haven't faked my own death before! Why so reluctant to believe me this time? And you still haven't explained the hellhound business."

"I was expecting hellhounds," Sam explained, in what he thought was a fairly reasonable tone. "Or maybe wendigos. Or clowns."

"Clowns." Fake-Gabriel crossed his arms and stared skeptically.

Sam held out his arm, where he'd written "THE CLOWNS AREN'T REAL" in block letters with a Sharpie marker. It had seemed a sensible precaution at the time. Oddly, Fake-Gabriel didn't appear to think so.

"What the hell…" Drawing himself up tall, he scanned Sam's face, searching for some explanation. "You know, I keep an occasional eye on you guys, even from my hiding places, just for entertainment. Heard your brother on the phone with my brother, and it sounded intriguing enough that I just had to come see for myself, and may I just say, this is...I have no words." He threw up his hands. "Do you have any idea how dehydrated you are right now?"

"Lots," Sam agreed, nodding. "That's why you're here."

"It...is?" Fake-Gabriel looked baffled. "Did you pray to me for help and I missed it?"

"No, I made you up because my brain needs water."

"Oh, for the love of...here." Gabriel abruptly extended a hand toward Sam's forehead. A flash of icy heat swept over Sam, making him jerk. "Have some water! Now do you believe me?"

Sam gaped like a fish. He suddenly felt much better - much, much better - and with the relief came terrifying clarity. "You're still here! You're actually here!"

"Bingo! Give the giant a prize!"

Sam scrambled to his feet. "Why are you here?" he managed to gasp, completely in shock.

"Well, that's gratitude. I told you, I'm here because you amuse me, and it would be unfortunate if I lost my Must-See-Winchester-TV to the backhills of Redneck-ville." Gabriel smirked. "Now, let's see about those ribs - I can tell that you've cracked a couple and bruised a few more…"

"No!"

Gabriel pulled back his hand in surprise at Sam's shout. "Ohhhh-kay, kiddo. Got some lingering trauma from trips to the doctor when you were a child? I promise, it won't hurt a bit, and you can even have a lollipop when I'm done."

"No, it's...it would be cheating." Sam grimaced when Gabriel barked a surprised laugh. "It's supposed to be a race, and I'm not supposed to have...help. No crewing - that means people helping me out here on the course. I shouldn't have let you un-dehydrate me, even." His head was still foggy from exhaustion and injury, even if he was no longer on the edge of desiccation, and he knew his skills at argument and persuasion were suffering. Gabriel just looked amused. "Nobody else has angelic help, so I shouldn't, either."

"Yeah, I challenge you to find me that rule in the handbook," Gabriel said, rolling his eyes. "I promise you, there have been more than a few Olympic medalists who had a little bit of supernatural assistance on the side, divine or diabolic. Some of the names might surprise you." Studying Sam's face, he sighed. "But they didn't have either your moral compass or your stubbornness, I'm guessing. Should have remembered your insistence on making things difficult for yourself just to prove a point. Some things never change."

Sam smiled weakly. "For what it's worth, I'm not really planning on going for the other fifty-some miles at this point." He stood back up, stumbling as his legs vehemently protested the effort. "Gonna cry 'uncle' at the end of this loop. All that remains to be seen is whether I can get there in…" He checked his watch and groaned. "...a little less than ten hours."

"Well, that's only sixteen miles!" Gabriel said brightly. "About thirty minutes a mile, which should be easy-peasy for you! Tell you what," he said when Sam just groaned louder. "I promise not to physically help you in any way, but I'll stick with you and keep you moving and motivated. How's that sound?"

"Knowing your methods of motivation, freaking hellish," Sam replied with a wince. "But effective, probably."

"'Hellish but effective'! That can be my new tagline!" Smiling broadly and stretching his arms over his head, Gabriel started off in the direction Sam had been heading. "You coming, Samwise?" Moving far less energetically, Sam followed.

* * *

"C'mon, Sam!" It was 2:45 PM, fifteen minutes before the time cut-off would end Sam's race. Dean was perched on a rock by the gate to the park; he'd forced himself to stop pacing and sit down after he'd noticed a few of the other support people pointing at him and whispering. He couldn't prevent his leg from jiggling up and down, though, or stop nervously cracking his knuckles. There had been many runners in the last twelve hours who had come back to the gate without having completed their loop, without all the required book pages, or simply without the energy or desire to continue on. Dean's confidence in his brother's abilities was sharply at war with his confidence in their family knack for finding new and exciting ways to get hurt.

Minutes passed. Only a few were left. The race director caught Dean's eye and fucking winked. Dean fought the urge to pull a weapon.

Then, in the last possible minute, Dean heard - singing? What the hell? "...take one down, pass it around, seventeen bottles of beer on the wall…" and Sam stumbled out of the treeline, nearly lurching as he made his way to the gate.

The director sighed with mock frustration. "Y'know, I could probably argue over whether you made it in time or not, depending on which watch I check," he said. "My own says you were probably past by a hair. But if you got all the pages, I'd most likely let you go on." He held out his hand questioningly.

"They're here, but I'm done," Sam said, and he collapsed forward onto the gate. Dean sprang forward to grab his shoulders. After Sam shoved the handful of papers over and Dean was leading him back to the car, supporting as much of Sam's weight as he could, they heard the sound of Taps echoing off-key through the woods.

"Sixteen bottles of beer on the wall…"

"Sam, you can have all the beer you want back home, but I'm going to need you to stop with the song now," Dean said, grunting as he shifted Sam onto the Impala's tailgate and knelt to pull off his frankly disgusting running shoes.

"Sorry," Sam said, eyelids fluttering. "Gabriel was singing it at me for the past hour, and it's kind of stuck in my head now."

Dean glanced up at his brother's face, looking for an indication that Sam was joking. "Gabriel?" he said. "Another runner?"

"No, the angel."

Oh. "Sam, you know that's...well, okay, if you were going to have a hallucination, I suppose it could be worse than a douchebag archangel," he said.

"Not a hallucination," Sam murmured.

"And all he did was sing, not anything violent or surreal or...wait, are you still hallucinating, dude?"

Sam shook his head. "Not hallucinating. He was really there, Dean."

"He's dead, Sam." Dean frantically rummaged in the trunk for a bottle of Gatorade. "They said being dehydrated would make you see stuff. Gabriel was not there." He shoved the bottle into Sam's hands.

"That's what I said, too," Sam said, frowning. "But he said he really was…"

"Which is exactly what you'd expect a hallucination to say."

"No, but he was! He rehydrated me with…" Sam wiggled his fingers at Dean's forehead. "And then he walked with me for the rest of the loop!"

"Singing 'One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall'?"

"'One Thousand', actually." Sam grimaced. "It was a long walk."

"And this is the rational behavior of a living angel? One who, the last time we saw him, was lying dead on the ground?" Sam shrugged. "Sam, no. He wasn't there. You're dehydrated and exhausted, so you cooked yourself up some company. I could question your tastes, but at least it wasn't a hellhound, I guess."

Sam barked a laugh, accidentally snorting the Gatorade he'd been drinking. "That's what I told him!"

"Yeah, all right," Dean sighed. He gently patted Sam on the back. "So you're going to lie down and sleep now. You had your fun, and your trippy, trippy mind journey, and now we're going to take a break from all the running. 'Kay?"

"'Kay."

* * *

"Loop 3, Number 4, Sam Winchester, thirty-six hours even." Sam read the race webpage, smiling faintly. Days later, he was still aching as though he'd been repeatedly tossed into piles of boulders by angry wendigos. After his initial collapse into unconsciousness following his exit from the race, he'd had difficulty sleeping at all, with intense muscle soreness making it difficult to rest well. He'd also had trouble eating, fighting through nausea, and the chafing...well, some things were better left undescribed.

"You couldn't have used a fake name, could you?" Dean grumbled. "Low profile, Sam. Familiar concept?"

"Not like there are any pictures, Dean. And anybody looking for me on the internet isn't going to care about race results, even if there were only one 'Sam Winchester' in the world."

"Yeah, sure."

Dean had been watching him like a hawk, ever since Sam had told him about Gabriel's miraculous Tennessee comeback. As the race endorphins faded and physical evidence of the event slowly disappeared from his body, Sam had begun to wonder whether he had, in fact, hallucinated the archangel. He couldn't remember when Gabriel had left his side at the end of the loop; one moment he had been warbling along happily, and in the next, he was just gone. The only real "proof" Sam had that he hadn't invented the whole thing was that when he'd handed in his final pages, his fingers and toes had lacked the strange, puffy appearance they'd been developing before Gabriel had appeared and zapped him full of fluids. Dean had insisted he must have been imagining that part, too.

And maybe he had. It was more likely, really.

He sighed to himself. "Ten bottles of beer on the wall," he sang quietly. He wondered how long the song was going to continue to ring through his brain. The tenacity of it was almost…uncanny. Sam frowned, thinking.

"Nah," he decided. He closed the browser window and opened a new search. In no time, he'd found enough evidence for a new hunt - nowhere near any woods, hills, or briar fields. "So, get this…"


End file.
